Saturday, February 6, 2016

My logged dives #1412-1413

In February the weather in the UAE can be instable. We were planning a weekend of diving but our weather eye detected a perturbation on Friday, when we had planned to drive down in the morning and dive Dibba Rock with Blue Planet Diving. We hadn't been back there since Alla left, and Slava it turned out was back home at an industry event in Moscow and not around. So we had planned to touch base but in the end there was no base to touch. Boats all along the coast were kept in on Friday due to rough sea conditions, or expectations of rough conditions. Apparently it wasn't that rough in reality as the weather abated, and we found later that BPD managed to get out for a late afternoon dive.

Things were looking better for Saturday so Bobbi and I drove down that evening and took our accommodation at Alia Suites and got up not that early next morning for the drive down the coast to Diver's Down on the premises of the Miramar. We had chosen them because they were not planning a dive to the deep Inchcape 1 just off the beach from the Miramar at Aqa'a. The Inchape 1 is a nice wreck but at 30 meters, only a 20 min dive, and not much bang for buck. Divers Down had been planning all along to go to the similar but shallower Inchcape 2 their first dive, 21 meters, and that is why we had chosen them over Nomad Fujairah and BPD, who were planning to dive the deep wreck that day, plus we wanted to visit with Paul the Divers Down owner. And we couldn't have gone north into Musandam Oman because Bobbi had her visa in process and was without her passport, and the weather was not favoring long boat rides that weekend anyway.

The video below is from our first dive that day, Bobbi and I starting on the Inchcape 2 wreck just south of Khor Fakkan UAE. The wreck is around 21-22 meters and I like to dive it for 20 min and then head west to the wall that leads into Hole-in-the-Wall Bay. There's a variety of terrain and wildlife there, including in this video a big turtle in the bay being harassed by a remora.

Our second dive of the day was on Dibba Rock, always a good site. Vis was not as good in either place as it can be but we still saw rays and baraccudas on Dibba Rock, nice to revisit. I'll put the video at the start of the post, https://youtu.be/uFwHcVes2AI.